If the majority is not to rule, who would be
the judge of the issue or where is such judge to be found?"
It is difficult to imagine a more exasperating condition of affairs than
obtained in Washington while Lincoln was awaiting the day of
inauguration. The government appeared to be crumbling away under the
nerveless direction, or lack of direction, of President Buchanan and his
associates. In his last message to Congress, Buchanan had taken the
ground that the Constitution made no provision for the secession of
States or for the breaking up of the Union; but that it also failed to
contain any provision for measures that could prevent such secession and
the consequent destruction of the nation. The old gentleman appeared to
be entirely unnerved by the pressure of events. He could not see any
duty before him. He certainly failed to realise that the more immediate
cause of the storm was the breaking down, through the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise, of the barriers that had in 1820, and in 1850, been
placed against the extension of slavery. He evidently failed to
understand that it was his own action in backing up the infamous
Lecompton Constitution, and the invasion of Kansas by the slave-owners,
which had finally aroused the spirit of the North, and further that it
was the influence of his administration which had given to the South the
belief that it was now in a position to control for slavery the whole
territory of the Republic.
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